


BABY, It's Cold Outside

by dem_hips



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dem_hips/pseuds/dem_hips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the annual HeroTV holiday party, a still slightly tipsy Barnaby finds himself on an unfamiliar couch in a bit of an awkward situation...  Written for a (self-imposed) Christmas Carol challenge, based on Bobby Caldwell and Vanessa Williams's "Baby, It's Cold Outside."</p>
            </blockquote>





	BABY, It's Cold Outside

It could be considered nothing but good luck that Barnaby awoke slowly.  Though his surroundings were quiet and dim, the crackling and glow of a fire in close proximity adulterated both these things; the flames seemed too harsh and the popping of the wood stung his eardrums.  Maybe that fifth glass of champagne had been a bad idea.  No, most assuredly it had been a bad idea.  What in the world could have possibly convinced him to try and out-drink Antonio?  
  
 _Probably the first four glasses,_ he thought with a grimace.  Eventually, he opened his eyes again, ignoring the way the light made his head pound, and groped around for his glasses.  He found them easily, folded neatly on the chair arm to his right.  Barnaby slipped them onto his nose and looked around.  
  
Where the hell was he, anyway?  The place was cozy; plush white leather couches stood sentry around the perimeter of the room, stark against a deep red carpet patterned with black and smooth, dark cherry furniture carved into swooping curves.  He himself was seated in a high-backed, matching armchair dragged close to the white marble fireplace, the mantle dotted with abstract crystal figures, and above which was mounted a large, flat television--off, blessedly.  The place clearly spoke of wealth, but not of familiarity.  Peering around the back of the chair, not trusting himself to stand just yet, he could make out a lit doorway beyond the ranks of the couches, leading into some other room.  He tensed, instantly regretting it when the tightening of his muscles ran along synapses to his already pounding head.  He needed to figure out where he was, _now_.  
  
 _Focus, Barnaby_ , he thought.  Easier said than done; thinking made his head hurt worse, and even just moving his eyes seemed to send a flash of fire across his forehead.  But he willed himself to look around, for any clues as to where he might have ended up and how.  The furniture and decor were nice, quite nice, but almost too generically so; it could have belonged to any number of people living on the Gold level and possibly some on Silver.  And it wasn’t as if Barnaby had made a point of visiting too many others.  He could have been sitting in the living room of just about anyone present at the party--or, he thought, with a sudden chill, perhaps someone else entirely.  
  
Sounds were coming from that lit room.  The clink of a glass, running water.  A rattle he could not quite put his finger on but would have preferred if it stopped being so grating, thank you very much.  And then footsteps, the click of heels.  Barnaby swallowed and held his breath, his control over his powers activating as itchy as a finger against a trigger.  As the footsteps came closer to the doorway, the light remained on.  The moment before his mystery host appeared seemed to last forever.  
  
His body relaxed when the familiar pink-haired head just perfectly breached the tall doorway and Fire Emblem headed towards his chair.  And then, almost immediately, Barnaby tensed again.   _Why **here**?!_  
  
The smile that crossed Nathan’s face as he knelt down by the armchair was faintly amused as he offered Barnaby both of his hands.  One held what appeared to be water in a glass; the other was closed in a loose fist.  “I’m not going to hurt you, Handsome,” he promised, nudging the glass just a little closer.  His voice was not terribly quiet, but somehow too smooth to rile up Barnaby’s alcohol-induced headache. “I’m glad you’re finally awake.  Here, these should help.”  
  
The green eyes that blinked--not at him, but at the glass--looked a little suspicious, but he reached out and closed his fingers around the clear, smooth container.  It was cool to the touch, and, he discovered, when he raised it to his nose, scentless.  He took a wary sip, but it was simply plain, cold water.  
  
“Here,” Nathan repeated, offering his fist again.  Blinking, Barnaby turned his cupped hand beneath Nathan’s fingers and soon found a pair of white pills deposited in his palm.  Painkiller.  
  
“Thank you,” he murmured, already closing his eyes and tilting his head to swallow the pills, along with a long sip of water.  While they slid down his throat, he straightened.  Nathan was watching him with his bright eyes, appraising.  
  
“I would avoid challenging Antonio to drinking contests in the future,” he advised, his amused voice bordering on teasing. “I tried to stop you, but you wouldn’t listen.”  
  
“It was very foolish,” Barnaby agreed, flatly, to try to neutralize some of that teasing.  “I hardly recall why I did it in the first place.”  He shifted, to make it easier for himself to drink, and took the rest of the contents of the glass down his throat in one long swallow.  
  
Nathan watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down with the motion.  “Would you like more?” he inquired, letting the topic go.  
  
“Not right now.  ...Thank you,” he repeated, rubbing at his forehead as if to facilitate a more rapid dissolution of the pills.  
  
Nathan took his empty glass without argument and set it carefully on the dark carpet beside him.  But he did not move from his perch.  
  
“Might I ask how I ended up here?” Barnaby inquired, after a moment of wondering whether he wanted to know.  
  
“It began to snow,” explained Nathan, glancing aside at the fur trim of his collar. “I don’t know if you were aware at the time to remember.  Everyone decided it would be safer to leave before the roads got too bad.”  
  
Barnaby thought.  He remembered arriving at the annual _HeroTV_ Christmas party on time, in his own vehicle.  He remembered the first flute of champagne that had gone along with Agnes’s toast.  He remembered the second one Kotetsu had offered him, and the third one he had excused himself from speaking with Mr. Lloyds to get, and the fourth that he had taken from Ivan’s hands when it looked like the younger Hero was already properly sauced from his first.  Things got pretty blurry after that.  He remembered Antonio bragging about how many drinks he had already put away, and having his own glass refilled, but after that everything was a frustrating blank.  He didn’t remember snow, and that thought made him feel a little sick.  Or maybe that was the hangover.  Probably both.  
  
“But why am I _here_?”  It probably sounded rude, but at the moment Barnaby didn’t care.  It looked as if he was the only one who had ended up in Fire Emblem’s flat, which really didn’t make sense, and honestly, it was a little worrying.  “Surely whoever brought me here could just as easily have taken me home.”  
  
Nathan rose to his feet, and at his full height the dimness of the room obscured his expression.  “Designated driver’s privilege,” he claimed, with a hint of more teasing, and before Barnaby could overcome his speechlessness at this unexpected response, Nathan headed back towards the doorway from which he had come.  “I think you need more water,” was his excuse, but Barnaby felt positively chilled.  
  
“I’d like it if you took me home,” he said, keeping his voice level with some effort.  
  
Nathan sighed, pausing halfway to the door.  He altered his course, crossing the room to a window on the wall adjacent to where the fireplace crackled and drawing aside dark gold curtains.  Barnaby could see now that “snow” was an understatement.  What may have started as a simple light dusting had turned into a full-on blizzard, white flakes zooming past the glass almost too quick and heavy to distinguish one from another.  Everywhere the light hit, swarms of snowflakes could be seen clustered and buzzing about each other, and down below, covering the ground, was a pile of many billions more, at least a foot high.  The normally busy roads of Sternbild were now populated only with a few snow plows, dotted here and there on the streets.  Barnaby couldn’t help but gape a little.  
  
“As you can see, that would not be a terribly safe,” concluded Nathan, allowing the curtains to close.  He returned through the doorway to refill the glass in his hand.  
  
“Can’t you just melt everything?” he asked, glancing into the fire.  In his despair, he sounded perhaps a little petulant.  
  
“Handsome.”  The older man’s voice rang with a mite of impatience as it dipped a bit lower in tone.  “Honestly.  You’re warm and safe and hopefully soon to be in less pain.  Why are you in such a hurry to be out in the cold?”  
  
It was the word “safe” that rang impossible in Barnaby’s ears.  This was too suspicious to be safe, and now he was bristling from his alcohol-marred memory, as well.  “Why couldn’t you have just taken me home?  What are you planning?”  
  
Nathan returned to Barnaby’s side with the refilled glass.  His expression had turned rather severe, the way it did when they were out fighting criminals.  “You suspect me of planning something...?”  
  
Barnaby didn’t answer.  
  
Silently, Nathan passed the glass back over to him, letting his eyelids fall closed.  “You were unconscious,” he reminded Barnaby, who wondered when that hurt tone had entered the older Hero’s voice.  “Everyone else was either too young or too drunk to keep an eye on you.  Was I supposed to just leave you alone?”  
  
After a moment, Barnaby swallowed and took the glass, feeling guilty despite his reservations.  “I’m sorry.  That was rude of me.”  He kept the liquid between his hands, for the time being, feeling the coolness against his warmed palms.  
  
“Drink, Handsome,” Nathan urged, quietly.  Barnaby drank.  
  
Maybe he had fallen asleep briefly, but Barnaby found it further alarming when one moment he was in that chair, and the next he was slipping out of Nathan’s arms and onto a bed, with soft, cool, eggplant-purple sheets marked with faint, dark green lines.  His head felt thick, numb.  What in the world had Fire Emblem given him...?  
  
“What...where...” he tried, but his tongue kept getting in the way.  
  
“Shh.”  There was a _whumph_ , as if something soft but heavy had fallen to the ground, and soon Nathan’s weight settled beside him.  Heavy blankets were pulled up over them both.  The room was dark.  Slender fingers reached over to pluck Barnaby’s glasses from his nose; when he reached up to stop them, the digits curled around his hand instead.  
  
“...Fire Emblem...please--”  
  
“ _Nathan_ ,” came the correction, gentle but insistent. “Please.”  Barnaby’s hand was pulled away, and a kiss was pressed to the back with large, soft lips.  He should have frozen.  His eyes should have widened and he should have been able to stop the older man.  But he squeezed the darker hand, instead, as if to encourage it, and let it go.  His glasses were gone from his face.  
  
 _What…?_  
  
Barnaby no longer felt hung over; now he felt drunk again, a hazy, loose state.  The older man leaned closer, leaving a second kiss at his jawline, and Barnaby felt warm skin against his bare shoulder.  Slowly, through the thick haze in his brain, he realized the sound before must have been Fire Emblem’s robe falling to the floor.  
  
Nathan’s skin slid over his, hand reaching across to far shoulder, lips trailing his collarbones and dropping kisses like bombs over the defenseless landscape of his neck.  Barnaby’s body squirmed with unexpected pleasure.  “...Fire...Em--”  
  
“ ** _Nathan_**.”  The voice was a growl, now, just before a warm, wet tongue traced the shell of his ear.  
  
“You have to stop,” he gasped.  “Please, I can’t…”  
  
“You can’t _what_?”  Sharp teeth nipped at his neck.  
  
Barnaby gripped Nathan’s shoulders, squeezing his eyes shut.  “I couldn’t face them, if they knew.”  
  
“‘Them’?”  
  
Barnaby groaned, soft fingers pressing into his hips.  
  
“Or is it just one person you’re afraid of knowing it...?”  
  
“...I...”  
  
“Shh.  He’ll never have to know.  He’ll never guess.  You could lie to his face and he’d believe every word you told him.”  
  
Nathan was straddling his hips, now, looking down at him, and Barnaby matched his gaze.  Even without his glasses, he could make out Nathan’s face clearly; it was with no malice that he said this, Barnaby realized.  He just looked...  
  
He didn’t have time to place the expression before Nathan ducked his head to lay a kiss against Barnaby’s neck.  His warm body rolled against Barnaby’s like a wave, pressing down on his shoulders, his chest, his stomach, his--  
  
\--Barnaby cried out, sitting straight up.  The embarrassing noise lasted only a moment, but his eyes were wide in horror and he was panting long after the concerned “Bunny!?” came from the other room, and there was Kotetsu, making his best effort to not appear as anxious as his partner and failing spectacularly.  
  
“What happened?  What’s wrong?  Did you hurt yourself?  Bunny!”  
  
As he caught his breath and the terror subsided, Barnaby took stock of himself.  His head ached.  His mouth was dry.  He was in Kotetsu’s room.  There was the by now familiar smell of fried rice coming from the kitchen.  
  
He’d had a nightmare.  
  
At least, that was what he hoped that all was.  Barnaby looked up at Kotetsu’s wide, searching eyes, darting all over his own face.  He tried to school his expression down from the alarming one that must have been there when he woke up.  
  
“...Bunny...?”  
  
“How long have I been here?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice calm.  
  
“‘How long’?” Kotetsu repeated, confused.  He glanced at his watch.  “Er...I guess we got in around two?  So eight hours or so?  You were completely conked out, so I put you in bed and slept on the couch.”  He sat on the edge of his bed, eyes searching Barnaby’s carefully.  “Are you hurt?” he asked again.  
  
“I had a nightmare,” Barnaby responded, dismissively. “It’s nothing.  I’m sorry I startled you.”  He reached over to the bedside table to retrieve his glasses.  
  
But Kotetsu’s expression remained stubbornly concerned.  “A nightmare?  It wasn’t another one with--”  
  
“ _No_ ,” the younger man interrupted, squeezing his eyes shut. “No, nothing like that.  Just a regular nightmare.”  
  
“Hm.”  The older man folded his arms thoughtfully for a moment before brightening.  “You should tell me about it!  They say if you tell someone about your nightmare, you’ll never have the same one again.”  
  
Barnaby tried to make his expression look cynical instead of horrified at the idea of describing his dream to Kotetsu.  “Your rice will burn,” he reminded him, instead of consenting.  
  
Kotetsu shook his head.  “It’s done.  Just cooling.  Are you hungry?  You can eat while you tell me.”  He got to his feet again, before Barnaby could protest.  “You should probably drink some water though.” Kotetsu continued from beyond the bedroom door. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you some.”  
  
A completely inappropriate feeling of insecurity struck Barnaby the moment Kotetsu left the room, as if that rendered him vulnerable to the scene from his dream.  But that was ridiculous.  It was just a nightmare, and the lack of Kotetsu’s presence certainly didn’t make it more real.  
  
Nevertheless, when the older man re-entered the room with a plate of rice in one hand and a plastic cup full of water in the other, something in his heart seemed to settle a little.  
  
“There’s a bottle of pain pills right next to you,” Kotetsu pointed out, and Barnaby turned to find the white bottle within easy reach.  “You’ll need those, right?”  He seemed oddly proud of himself--at his own foresight?  As expected from the old man.  “Three drinks and you were out.”  Kotetsu grinned.  “I keep forgetting what a lightweight you are.”  
  
“I am not a lightweight,” Barnaby responded, keeping up his end of an eternal argument as he reached for the pills.  Looked like his supposed challenge to Antonio wasn’t real either.  That was a relief, for his liver as well as otherwise.  
  
“Mmmm,” Kotetsu responded, in that sort of infuriatingly smug way he sometimes had when he thought he was right.  Barnaby rolled his eyes and swallowed two of the red-and-white pills with some of the water.  The old man’s familiar quirks were at least comforting in their inanity, he thought, reaching for the rice.  He wasn’t terribly hungry, but he knew he should eat something.  Besides, he didn’t want Kotetsu’s efforts to go to waste--or he’d never hear the end of it.  
  
“Okay,” Kotetsu said, after he’d taken a couple spoonfuls into his mouth, “tell me about this nightmare.”  
  
Barnaby tried not to choke on the food.  He finished chewing, slowly, and swallowed even slower.  “I’ve already forgotten it,” he claimed, calmly, already preparing to take up another spoonful.  
  
“What?”  The older man’s face registered surprise.  “You woke up screaming, how do you forget that so fast?”  
  
Barnaby shrugged and popped another spoonful of rice into his mouth.  
  
“ _Bunny_ ,” he insisted, as his partner chewed.  
  
The younger man sighed after swallowing.  “I woke up screaming, from a nightmare that _didn’t mean anything_ ,” he said, a little pointedly. “Any normal person would try to forget it.”  
  
They watched each other for a moment, Barnaby’s green eyes forcibly unaffected in response to Kotetsu’s moment of cynicism.  Kotetsu looked away first.  
  
“Well, just because you forgot it doesn’t mean you won’t have it again,” he claimed seriously, getting to his feet. “Tell me if you remember anything, okay?”  Without even waiting for Barnaby to nod, he stepped slowly out of the room and back towards the kitchen.  
  
 _You could lie to his face and he’d believe every word you told him._  
  
Barnaby didn’t really think Kotetsu believed what he said.  Not really.  More that he was letting it go, for Barnaby’s own sake.  In all honesty, it was not those words from the dream that really bothered him, though; it was the expression that had accompanied them.  Unfettered by sleep, now, he thought hard to recall it: not quite jealousy, not quite sadness.  Something in between.  Longing.  
  
He sighed again, reminding himself that _normal_ dreams, dreams that were not byproducts of years of memory adulteration, didn’t mean anything.  It was simply a dream, an amalgamation of thoughts and scenes from his waking hours.  Nothing more.  
  
After a few minutes, Kotetsu returned with his own plate of rice.  He sat back on the bed and they ate together, in the soft sunlight tinted blue with the lightly falling snow.


End file.
